2014 International year of crystallography celebration: North America

CrystEngComm celebrates IYCr 2014!

Crystalline solids have been a source of human fascination and admiration since the very earliest times, and the first truly scientific endeavours included curiosity-driven investigations of crystals in order to understand their structures, properties and, occasionally, near-magical powers. Although some of these ventures resulted in erroneous, quickly forgotten speculations, crystallography has uncovered unique insights that have completely shaped the way we understand all of chemistry.¹ For Haüy, the regularity of facets of a crystalline solid was a direct demonstration of its chemical composition and, importantly, of its ordered, periodic structure at the molecular level.² This assumption was gloriously confirmed in the next century by von Laue through X-ray diffraction, leading to the birth of X-ray crystallography.³ It is widely accepted that no single scientific discipline has provided more data and unique information of such vital importance to biological and materials sciences alike than crystallography.

In this themed issue, celebrating the International Year of Crystallography, CrystEngComm pays tribute to crystal engineering, a highly interdisciplinary area at the interface of structural and materials sciences, which begun some fifty years ago through the application of X-ray crystallography to a problem of solid-state reactivity of cinnamic acids. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s extensive and systematic studies by Schmidt and co-workers successfully demonstrated how X-ray structure determination can help explain the solid-state [2 + 2] photochemical reactivity observed in different polymorphs and derivatives of cinnamic acid.⁴ This convincing, yet sometimes challenged⁵ demonstration of a direct correlation between the crystalline structure of an organic solid and its reactivity is often perceived as the real starting point in crystal engineering which, just like X-ray crystallography itself, has developed into a very dynamic and diverse research field supported by contributions from academic and industrial investigators from all around the world.

With X-ray crystallography as its most important tool, crystal engineering seeks to understand the structure of crystalline materials and molecular assembly in the solid state as a way to achieve its ultimate goal, the deliberate design of materials with tailored properties.⁶ Over the past 50 years, crystal engineering has embraced a plethora of experimental techniques and theoretical approaches including, but not limited to, solid-state NMR spectroscopy,⁷ terahertz spectroscopy,⁸ mechanochemical synthesis,⁹ atomic-scale microscopy¹⁰ and crystal structure prediction.¹¹ Single crystal X-ray diffraction studies have facilitated extensive structural and material explorations of multi-component crystals,¹² deliberately prepared through the application of designs based on supramolecular synthons,¹³ and aimed towards applications in photochemical synthesis,¹⁴ pharmaceutical science,¹⁵ supramolecular and biomolecular recognition studies¹⁶ or polymer synthesis.¹⁷ Crystal engineering has expanded from organic crystalline solids¹⁸ and now addresses the design of inorganic materials,¹⁹ solids based on mechanically interlocked molecules,²⁰ node-and-linker design²¹ and assembly of functional metal–organic²² or covalent organic materials,²³ crystallization and design of pharmaceutical solids²⁴ and the synthesis of nano-sized organic²⁵ and inorganic materials.²⁶

Despite all the impressive progress that has been made to date, X-ray crystallography²⁷ still retains an absolutely essential role in the further advancement of crystal engineering and the many possible applications thereof.

In this special issue of CrystEngComm, we want to illustrate and celebrate the role of X-ray crystallography in the broad context of crystal engineering through a collection of articles from authors in North America.

References

1. K. Molčanov and V. Stilinović, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2014, 53, 638–652.
2. For a summary of Haüy’s work, see: L. P. Gratacap, Am. Mineral., 1918, 3, 100–125.
3. M. von Laue, Ber. Dtsch. Chem. Ges., 1917, 53, 214–216 and references cited therein.
4. (a) M. D. Cohen, G. M. J. Schmidt and F. I. Sonntag, J. Chem. Soc., 1964, 2000–2013; (b) G. M. J. Schmidt, J. Chem. Soc., 1964, 2014–2021.
5. G. Kaupp, CrystEngComm, 2003, 5, 117–133.
6. G. M. J. Schmidt, Pure Appl. Chem., 1971, 27, 647.
7. (a) D. Bardelang, A. Brinkmann, C. I. Ratcliffe, J. A. Ripmeester, V. V. Terskikh and K. A. Udachin, CrystEngComm, 2014, 16, 3788–3795; (b) R. W. Schurko, Acc. Chem. Res., 2013, 46, 1985–1995.
8. E. P. J. Parrot, J. A. Zeitler, T. Friščić, M. Pepper, W. Jones, G. M. Day and L. F. Gladden, Cryst. Growth Des., 2009, 9, 1452–1460.
9. M. C. Etter, G. M. Frankenbach and J. Bernstein, Tetrahedron Lett., 1989, 30, 3617–3620.
10. (a) C. M. Perrin and J. A. Swift, CrystEngComm, 2012, 14, 1709–1715; (b) Y. Fang, P. Nguyen, O. Ivasenko, M. P. Aviles, E. Kebede, M. S. Askari, X. Ottenwaelder, U. Ziener, O. Siri and L. A. Cuccia, Chem. Commun., 2011, 47, 11255–11257.
11. M. D. Eddleston, K. E. Hejczyk, E. G. Bithell, G. M. Day and W. Jones, Chem. – Eur. J., 2013, 19, 7874–7882.
12. C. B. Aakeröy, T. K. Wijethunga and J. Desper, CrystEngComm, 2014, 16, 28–31.
13. A. Nangia and G. R. Desiraju, Supramolecular Synthons and Pattern Recognition, Top. Curr. Chem., 1998, 198, 57–95.
14. K. A. Wheeler, S. H. Malehorn and A. E. Egan, Chem. Commun., 2012, 48, 519–521.
15. A. Delori, T. Friščić and W. Jones, CrystEngComm, 2012, 14, 2350–2362.
16. (a) J. Viger-Gravel, S. Leclerc, I. Korobkov and D. L. Bryce, CrystEngComm, 2013, 15, 3168–3177; (b) M. A. Ziganshin, I. G. Efimova, V. V. Gorbatchuk, S. A. Ziganshina, A. P. Chuklanov, A. A. Bukharaev and D. V. Soldatov, J. Pept. Sci., 2012, 18, 209–214.
17. J. W. Lauher, F. W. Fowler and N. S. Goroff, Acc. Chem. Res., 2008, 41, 1215–1229.
18. (a) S. W. Robinson, D. A. Haynes and J. M. Rawson, CrystEngComm, 2013, 15, 10205–10211; (b) R. K. Singh, X. Hou, M. Overby, M. Schober and Q. Chu, CrystEngComm, 2012, 14, 6132–6135.
19. C. M. Read, D. E. Bugaris and H.-C. zur Loye, Solid State Sci., 2013, 17, 40–45.
20. I. R. Fernando and G. Mezei, Inorg. Chem., 2012, 51, 3156–3160.
21. A. Schoedel, A. J. Cairns, Y. Belmabkhout, L. Wojtas, M. Mohamed, Z. Zhang, D. M. Proserpio, M. Eddaoudi and M. J. Zaworotko, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 2902–2905.
22. G. A. Hogan, N. P. Rath and A. M. Beatty, Cryst. Growth Des., 2011, 11, 3740–3743.
23. D. Beaudoin, T. Maris and J. D. Wuest, Nat. Chem., 2013, 5, 830–834.
24. (a) B. Van Eerdenbrugh, S. Raina, Y.-L. Hsieh, P. Augustijns and L. S. Taylor, Pharm. Res., 2014, 31, 969–982; (b) A. Mattei, X. Mei, A.-F. Miller and T. Li, Cryst. Growth Des., 2013, 13, 3303–3307.
25. H. Kumari, A. V. Mossine, N. J. Schuster, C. L. Barnes, C. A. Deakyne and J. L. Atwood, CrystEngComm, 2014, 16, 3718–3721.
26. (a) B. T. McGrail, L. S. Pianowski and P. C. Burns, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136, 4797–4800; (b) E. L. Gavey, Y. Beldjoudi, J. M. Rawson, T. C. Stamatos and M. Pilkington, Chem. Commun., 2014, 50, 3741–3743.
27. W. H. Ojala, K. M. Lystad, T. L. Deal, J. E. Engebretson, J. M. Spude, B. Balidemaj and C. R. Ojala, Cryst. Growth Des., 2009, 9, 964–970.

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